


Together

by complicationstoo



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Comic Book Science, Fix-It, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Happy Ending, M/M, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:00:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 21,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27643820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/complicationstoo/pseuds/complicationstoo
Summary: During the Time Heist, Steve and Tony travel back to April 7th, 1970, only to get stuck there when an accident destroys the Pym particles. While they devise a plan to get back home, conversations uncover buried feelings and long-kept secrets that alter their relationship forever.
Relationships: Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers - Relationship, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark - Relationship
Comments: 63
Kudos: 300





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work is compliant through Avengers: Infinity War, and mostly follows the beginning of Endgame until the scene where Steve and Tony go back in time. The only important difference is that while Pepper and Tony did get married and had Morgan, they are divorced at the start of Endgame.

Tony knew going into it that there were a multitude of things that could go wrong with time travel. New technologies always have problems, even when they don’t involve the space-time continuum. Add in the potential for human error and Tony would estimate that there’s at least a hundred thousand scenarios where they fail and maybe two or three where they get it right. He played them all in his head in the days leading up to the actual journey, but yet he still agreed to it. The risk seemed worth the possible payout. 

Now, though, standing in an alleyway in New Jersey with Steve next to him and the Pym particles they need to get back to the present lying destroyed on the grounds of Camp Lehigh, he questions that decision a bit. For all of his imagining, he never dreamed up a scenario that got them stuck in 1970 with no way home. 

“So this is bad,” he says, keeping his tone light even as Steve glares at him. As if it’s his fault that Steve’s part of the mission went sideways. It’s not like he was the one to bump into Steve, and he wasn’t the one to drop the vials of particles, either. No, the honor of the former belongs to a young, flustered man who apologized so many times for accidentally knocking into Steve’s shoulder that Tony actually felt sorry for him instead of sorry for themselves. 

The vials falling wasn’t really Steve’s fault, but the sound of the glass shattering on concrete was enough to make Tony’s heart stop beating completely for a moment. The near sprint they had to break into during their escape from the camp got it started again. 

“You think?” Steve’s words are as harsh as his stare, and his jaw is set so tightly that Tony wonders how his teeth aren’t breaking under all that pressure. His train of thought sharply deviates toward the idea of testing Steve’s bone strength under lab conditions, but Steve pushes it back on its tracks by slumping against the brick wall and sighing heavily. 

He looks broken, and Tony knows that he’s blaming himself completely for it, even though he shouldn’t. He feels a wave of sympathy and leans on the wall next to him. 

“Think of it this way, you were frozen through the seventies the first time, and I’m not even born yet. We’re having new experiences. A live tour of history, brought to you by time travel gone wrong.”

There’s a long beat, then Steve starts to laugh. It’s a touch hysterical and definitely brought on as a stress response to the situation, rather than Tony’s attempt at humor, but Tony will take it anyway. It’s better than the alternative, and at least no one is yelling yet.

Steve runs a hand through his hair, the hat from his disguise crumpled in his other hand. He gives a forlorn sigh as he stares at the ground.

“So,” he starts, looking up at Tony, “got a backup plan?”

“This was the backup plan, Cap,” Tony smiles ruefully. “Now, if you’re looking for a plan c, then I’m going to need a minute.”

“Yeah, well, feel free to take your time. We’ve got plenty of it.”

“Good to know there really is no such thing as ‘too soon’ in this scenario. I was worried I was going to cross a line.”

Steve shakes his head, smiling, “You? Worried about crossing a line? Doesn’t sound like you to me.”

“Doesn’t hurt to tread lightly when you’re stuck in the wrong decade with someone you once violently fought in a Siberian bunker.” The statement makes Steve wince, and Tony laughs, “But there is apparently such a thing as ‘too soon’ on that one. Also good to know.” 

Steve stands up straight, shoulders back and posture arrow straight. “We should get out of here. Find somewhere to lay low for a while so we can make a plan.”

“Right, and where do you suggest we go?”

Steve looks around, presumably taking in their surroundings, and Tony does the same. The alley is wedged between a shoddy looking diner and a pharmacy, filled with damp cardboard boxes and smelling like grease and rotting food. Steve probably knows the area around them a little better than Tony does, but it has been almost thirty years since he was here for basic training and it’s still another forty until he was here on a mission. Tony wonders if Steve even realizes they’re almost smack dab in the middle of his visits here. 

The only things on them are their travel suits, which transformed into their current disguises, the devices on their wrists, and the briefcase with the tesseract. They all foolishly believed they wouldn’t need anything else, but Tony wishes they had the foresight to at least bring some money with them. Though, he reasons, no one could have predicted the two of them getting stuck in 1970s New Jersey when the plan was 2012 New York. 

“We’re better off walking for now, I think. No use waiting around here like sitting ducks,” Steve finally concludes. He looks down at his clothing in consideration. “We should change first.”

Tony glances at his own outfit and decides, “I’m good like this.”

“Tony, we just barely escaped a secure military base a few miles from here with stolen property. Change your clothes.”

They move deeper into the alley, away from any possible onlookers. The suits return to their original forms first, and then they can morph them into another look of their choosing. 

“How 70’s are we going here?”

“Just try to blend in.”

Tony recalls the outfits of the few civilians they passed on the way here and tries to copy one of them. Steve, it appears, does the same. They both end up in loose-fitting dark jeans, though Steve’s have a slight flare at the bottom that Tony left out on his own. Steve’s military green shirt transforms into a plaid button up, and Tony bites his tongue to hold back the comment that it’s not that different from what he wears in the present. Tony’s shirt becomes a tan sweater that shouldn’t draw any attention to him. They’re shoes are nearly identical brown loafers, and their outfits as a whole should accomplish the goal of blending in. 

Except for one thing. 

“You might want the sunglasses again, Cap,” Tony suggests. “Willing to bet you’re pretty well-known around here still, especially with all the military personnel wandering about.” 

Steve takes the suggestion without hesitation, sunglasses appearing over his eyes. He adjusts the way they are resting on his nose, and Tony gives him a once over before nodding his approval. 

“Alright, we’re just two ordinary men walking down the sidewalk,” Tony says as they make their way to the mouth of the alley. “Not at all planning how we’re going to break back into a military base.”

“Tony.”

“Sorry.”

He lets Steve take the lead, following from beside him as they head down the sidewalk. Tony tries not to look around too much, or at least to be subtle about it. He wants to look familiar with the area to remain unsuspicious, but he also needs to be aware of his surroundings. 

“How long do you think we’ll have to wait before we can go back in?” Steve asks. “For the particles, I mean. I took all of them, and I assume he’ll need some time to replace them.”

Tony nods, “I can’t be sure how long. I can’t even say the process of how they’re made, because if I knew then we wouldn’t even be in this mess in the first place. I would’ve made more before we left.”

“Tony Stark admitting he doesn’t know something. Never thought I’d see the day.” 

It’s said lightly, without even a trace of malice, but it still stings a little. After all these years and he still feels like Steve has never quite understood him. He thought that he might have once, back in the days where friendship seemed like it could have been headed in the direction of something more, but maybe that was never the case at all. 

“I can always admit when I don’t know something. It’s just that it doesn’t need to happen very often.”

Steve gives him a lingering look, expression unreadable, and then it’s back to business. “Is a few days a reasonable guess?”

“At least,” Tony agrees, easily going with the stilted shift backwards in conversation. “I imagine there’s going to be some hell when Hank notices that they’re missing, though. Probably won’t be as easy to get to the second time around.”

“Lock and key for sure.”

“And just to further complicate things, we’ve got to make sure that this -” Tony lifts the briefcase “- stays secure. Which means it’s probably best that only one of us goes in.”

“You’re probably the best call for that.”

Tony tries not to let the surprise show on his face, but it must make it through anyway. 

“You already made it through the more secure areas, and you don’t have a famous face in this decade yet. There are at least two people in the building who would recognize me in an instant, but you can be anyone,” Steve reasons. 

“Alright, I can be the one to go in,” Tony acquiesces. “But there’s still the problem of getting in, and even if we manage, we’ll have no way of knowing that there are any particles there at all.”

They go quiet as they continue down the street, both of them strategizing in their heads. Luck seems to play too heavy of a hand moving forward, and Tony thinks they’re already all out of that. 

“What will happen here if we change things? If we let someone know about the future?” Steve asks. 

Tony isn’t surprised by the question, and he’s already thought about the answer before. “My best guess would be an alternate timeline. We can’t change our own future by changing the past, but we can create a new future for this present. At this point, I figure we’ve already done that.”

“But you don’t know for sure?”

Tony shrugs, meeting Steve’s level gaze, “There are no hard and fast rules for time travel. It’s never been done before. Well, not that we know of, anyway.”

“I think we need a man on the inside. Someone who will know where the particles are being held, when they’re made.”

It doesn’t take a genius to reason out the contenders for an inside man. Like Steve already said, there are two people there who would know him in an instant. 

“Not sure I love our options for that.”

Steve barrels on, “Howard is probably our best bet. He’ll know everything that’s happening with Pym, and he could probably steal them for us.”

“No,” Tony says flatly.

“It might be our only way back in, Tony. I know you have a grudge against him -”

“It’s not a ‘grudge,’ Rogers,” Tony sneers. “And even if it was, there’s not a chance in hell he even bothers to hear us out, and we’re thrown in some asylum until we die in the wrong decade.”

“We don’t know that. If we tell him the truth of what’s happening, explain everything, I think he would be willing to help.”

“I already talked to him once, and that’s it. That’s the most courtesy I’m willing or able to extend to him. We can find another way.”

Steve looks visibly irritated with Tony’s refusal, but to his credit he doesn’t try to persuade him any further. It would be a losing battle, anyway. Talking to Howard again, meeting the man he was before Tony was born, only raised more questions. 

He always wondered what happened to turn him from the guy Steve knew and respected to the man Tony had as his father. Tony used to think it was at least partially because of losing Steve, grief and fruitless searches for the fallen plane turning him cold. But the man he just saw wasn’t cold. He was on his way home to his pregnant wife and seemed genuinely happy about the prospect. The only conclusion he has left is that Tony himself was the cause of the change. 

But he doesn’t have time to dwell on it, nor does he want to. That part of his past is fine to stay buried, even if he’s close to living in it again right now. 

“Got an option number two for us, Captain?”

Steve sighs, hand sweeping through his hair again. “I’d rather not involve her.”

“She would believe us.”

Steve bites his lip. “You won’t reconsider?”

“My father issues trump your lost love issues.”

They stop at a street corner, waiting for their chance to cross traffic alongside a young woman and her toddler, and they fall silent in their presence. Tony looks over at the child, who gives him a toothy smile, and his heart aches for the one waiting for him five decades in the future. 

Steve catches him looking and says low enough for only him to hear, “We’ll get you back to her.”

“I know,” Tony says, tearing his gaze away from the wide green eyes of the little girl to meet Steve’s instead. “We have no other choice.” 


	2. Chapter 2

Peggy Carter’s house is quaint, with its brown brick front and white picket fence. There are a few things scattered around the front yard, a baseball glove and a wooden bat, and a basketball hoop is perched above the garage door. Everything about it paints the picture of a nice suburban family. 

The house is also a relief to finally see after walking six miles to get to it. Tony’s feet are sore, probably blistered from the shoes that definitely weren’t made for walking long distances. The only saving grace is that they didn’t get lost on the way here, and Tony doesn’t want to ask how exactly Steve managed that so well. An eidetic memory combined with reading over Peggy’s file a few too many times, probably. 

Steve pauses in front of the house, standing with his hands awkwardly hanging out at his sides. His fingers flex repeatedly like he’s resisting the urge to ball them into fists, and his shoulders are tense and squared. 

Tony wants to tell him they don’t have to do this. He’ll deal with his father issues instead, rather than make Steve face Peggy again. But Steve takes a deep breath, followed by a long, heavy exhale, and then he’s walking toward the door. 

They made their plan on the walk over, what to include in the story and what to leave out. The plan is to change as little as possible for everyone involved, which means giving the bare minimum of details. Just enough to make their case and prove that the story is real, but not enough to give anyone the chance of making a drastic change that could derail everything. Peggy ended up happy in their timeline, and she deserves the same in this one. 

Steve knocks twice on the door, then clasps his hands behind his back. Tony stands a bit behind him, just to the left - visible but not the focus of attention in any way. There’s some movement inside, followed by the door opening, and Peggy Carter is standing in front of them. 

Her appearance is much the same as Tony remembers from his childhood, with her dark hair in loose curls and professional knee-length dress. It’s like she walked in straight from one of his earliest memories, and it’s strange to realize that only a few years separate the woman in front of him from the one who taught him how to throw a punch. 

For a long moment, she doesn’t move or react, other than the slight parting of her red-painted lips. She stares at Steve, and Steve stares back. 

Tony feels like he doesn’t belong here, like he’s intruding on something he shouldn’t be allowed to be anywhere near. If it were a movie, this would be the part with the sudden swell of violins and the long-separated lovers would fall together in a passionate kiss. Tony is half-expecting the latter part to happen anyway, even knowing that Peggy is married with children and going on fifty. He looks down at the doormat just in case, unwilling to witness that as well. 

Steve breaks the silence first, “Hi, Peg.”

She snaps out of whatever trance she was in and steps forward to close the distance between them. Her arms wrap around Steve’s shoulders, and he hesitates for just a second before returning the embrace. Tony keeps his eyes averted, but he can still see the tears in hers, and he takes a step back to give them some space. He can’t hear exactly what either of them say, but he catches the low murmurs to know they’re speaking. 

No one told him that witnessing someone he once thought he could love be reunited with their actual true love would hurt so much, and he feels like an idiot for not expecting it. There’s a hollow pain in his chest as he realizes that maybe ‘once’ isn’t so accurate. 

When they part, she leaves one hand on Steve’s arm as if she’s afraid he’ll disappear if she lets go. Her gaze shifts to Tony, where it lingers for a few seconds, then it goes back to Steve. “I imagine there is an explanation for this.”

“There is,” Steve says, smiling a little, “but I’m afraid you won’t like it much.”

She steps back, holding the door open, and her smile matches Steve’s. “I almost never do.”

The inside of the house is another picture of a nice family life. They walk into the living room, and while it’s neat and organized, it’s clear the room is used frequently. The couch is a little worn down, and a magazine is spread open on the coffee table with an advertisement for Aqua Velva aftershave. Framed pictures dot the wall of the staircase to the right with smiling children in swimsuits on beach vacations and Peggy in a white dress. No one else seems to be home at the moment, and Tony is grateful for that small miracle. 

She leads them through the living room and into the kitchen, where she tells them to have a seat. The offer of coffee is made, and Tony accepts, because he gets the feeling that she needs the distraction of performing the action.

It’s quiet while she gets the water into the percolator and starts the gas on the stove. When she’s done, she takes a seat at the dining table across from them, and Tony can feel the silence like a vice around his neck. 

“Well,” Peggy says, folding her hands on the table, “I’ll have that explanation now.”

Steve glances Tony’s way, and they both seem to be realizing that their plan didn’t include a place to start. What to include, sure, but not how they were going to say it. 

Peggy interrupts their silent exchange by looking at Tony and saying, “Your name is as good a place to start as any.”

“Oh, um, right. Anthony Edward Stark, but I prefer Tony.”

He watches her face as she processes that, her eyes narrowing as she takes him in with this new piece of information. It says a lot with only three words. Probably doesn’t help that he looks quite a bit like his father, especially the Howard she first met during the war. 

“I’m really not going to like this one at all, am I?” 

“No, you’re not,” Steve sighs. “And I know that it will be hard to believe, but everything we’re about to tell you is the absolute truth.”

“I don’t doubt it. You’ve never been a liar.”

Tony bites his lip to keep from laughing, and then he has to cover his mouth with his hand. Steve kicks him under the table, but Peggy doesn’t seem to notice the exchange. 

Tony decides to launch right into it. “The gist of it is that we’re from a point in time that’s quite a few decades in the future, and we’re in need of some help to get back.”

The look on Peggy’s face is about what he would expect - surprise followed by skepticism. He doesn’t miss the way her fingers twitch, either, and he knows there’s a holster attached to her thigh. She wouldn’t be the woman he remembers if she wasn’t fully prepared to shoot an imposter of her presumed dead ex-boyfriend. 

“There was an attack in our time that wiped out half of the Earth,” Tony continues, because he might as well hit her with all of it at once. “Essentially the only way to undo the damage was to go back in time, but it hasn’t gone according to plan.”

The skepticism has only grown, and Tony can’t really blame her for that. He would be hard pressed to believe it if the situation were reversed, though his threshold for insanity has dramatically decreased over the years. 

“How are you from the future if you already died in 1945?” Peggy asks, looking at Steve. 

Steve swallows hard, “I can’t quite tell you exactly how it happened. The thing about time travel is that changing our own past won’t change the future we go back to, but it could change the future you receive. All I can really say is that the Steve Rogers that exists in this time isn’t really alive or dead, but eventually he’ll wake up in the future.”

“We know it doesn’t make much sense,” Tony interjects. “But it is in your best interest that we only give you the bare minimum of information right now.”

She turns her sharp eyes back onto him now, and Tony does his best not to squirm under the assessing stare. It’s the same look that always got him to confess to things as a kid. 

“Are you his son?” She doesn’t need to specify who she’s referring to. 

Tony nods, “Still some time left before I exist here, but not much now.” 

Peggy leans back in her chair, glancing between the two of them once again. “Say I choose to believe this story, what is the assistance you hope to receive from me?”

“Hank Pym is currently an employee of S.H.I.E.L.D., correct?”

He sees the moment she connects their appearance in her kitchen with the stolen vials from before. The corner of her mouth quirks into a near smile. “I take it you’re to blame for this morning’s security breach?”

Tony grins, “Guilty as charged.”

“Didn’t find what you were looking for?”

“Part of it, yes,” Steve says. He leaves out what this part is, which they agreed to do on the walk over. Hopefully no one will notice that the tesseract is missing, because they can’t risk it getting taken from them. “But the components we need to get back to our time got destroyed. We need more, and the only person that can supply them is Pym.”

“The particles he’s been working on make time travel possible. They allow us to shrink down to a size smaller than an atom and enter what’s called the Quantum Realm. There’s no going back without them.”

“And why the time travel in the first place?” Peggy asks. “You say it’s the only way to undo the damage, but I’m afraid I don’t see how.”

“The explanation for that would change things here drastically,” Tony says. 

“If you knew what we knew, you would change things. Anyone would. But we can’t know that the future that lies that way is any better than the one we have now. It could be, or it could end up with greater destruction.”

“We don’t believe that’s our call to make,” Tony tacks on when Steve is finished. “Our only goal is changing our present, not altering your future.” 

Peggy falls quiet in contemplation, and Tony feels like he can hardly breathe while he waits for what she has to say. He’d understand if she threw them out and rejected the story, would even understand if she did decide to put that gun in her thigh holster to use. 

She makes them wait for a verdict as she stands to retrieve the coffee that has finished brewing. It isn’t until they each have a mug in front of them that she finally says, “We’ll need to come up with a plan to get the particles. I can’t very well just walk into the lab and take them. It’ll take some time I’m sure, but there’s a safehouse not far from here that you can use while you’re here.”

“So you believe us?” Steve asks, a hopeful yet cautious look on his face. 

“The story is too outrageous to be a fiction, even from someone as creative as you,” Peggy smiles, but it’s weak. This wasn’t the explanation she was hoping for, though Tony doesn’t think any would have satisfied. Not after 25 years of hoping for a different ending. 

“Thank you, Peggy,” Steve says, voice so thick with emotion that Tony has to look away again. 

“We’ll get you set up with some clothes, too,” Peggy says, eyes drifting over their outfits. “Those are rather dreadful.”

Tony and Steve both laugh, and for the first time in quite a while, Tony allows himself to hope that things might turn out okay. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone that has left a kudos, a comment, and/or subscribed so far!!

The safehouse is less house and more apartment. It’s a fourth floor walk up in a dingy building about ten miles from Peggy’s suburban neighborhood. There are two other apartments on the same floor, but one is unoccupied and the other resident is apparently an old man who’s mostly gone deaf. According to Peggy, an explosion could go off and he wouldn’t even flinch. (Steve gives Tony a pointed look at that, so Tony decides not to take it as a dare, even though it kind of is.)

“I know it isn’t much,” Peggy says, clasping her hands in front of her by the door while Steve and Tony take a look around. It’s a studio apartment with the bare minimum of furniture. A full-sized bed is against one wall, covered with a thin blue blanket. One corner has a small kitchen with little counter space and a round table with three chairs evenly placed around it, another has a living room with an olive green couch, television set, and coffee table. Tony assumes that the only door besides the front one leads to the bathroom. 

“I’ll come by tomorrow with some more things. Clothes, food, all the necessities. But there should be enough to get by for tonight and the morning.”

Steve walks over to her, pulling her into another hug. When he pulls away, he says, “Thank you, Peg. It’s more than enough.”

She gives him a tight smile, and Tony receives one as well. He can’t imagine how she’s feeling right now, but he’s willing to bet it’s a mix of about thirty different emotions and only one or two of them are good. 

“We’ll talk strategy tomorrow as well,” she says as she presses a key into the palm of Steve’s hand. “If anyone knocks before noon, don’t answer.”

Peggy leaves them for now, and Tony and Steve take the chance to finish investigating. They’ve been in enough safehouses together that they have a routine for it. Steve goes to the kitchen and checks the food supply while Tony opens the door to the bathroom. 

There’s a small bathtub that looks fairly clean with a showerhead attached to the wall and a few half-used bottles of soaps and shampoo on the shelves. The toilet is cramped in next to the tub, with a sink across from that. Above the sink is a rectangular mirror that opens into a cabinet, and Tony checks what it holds. A bottle of Excedrin that’s so old the label is turning brown, a tube of toothpaste from a brand Tony doesn’t even recognize, mouthwash that he’ll be sure to steer clear of, a jar of Vaseline, and, thankfully, a package of unopened toothbrushes. 

He looks below the sink next, finding a plunger and toilet bowl cleaner, both of which he hopes will be unnecessary. For the last step, he turns on the sink to check for hot water and is pleasantly surprised to find that it works. 

Walking out of the bathroom, he shuts the door behind him and announces his findings to Steve, “We’ve got shampoo, hot water, new toothbrushes, and only mildly questionable toothpaste. Plus, if you’re brave enough, there’s even some mouthwash that probably only has a little bit of a stranger’s backwash in it.”

Steve grimaces, “I think I’ll pass on that. Did you find towels anywhere?”

Tony purses his lips, looking around for something that could be a linen closet. There are two closet doors by the bed that he assumed were for a standard closet, but he crosses the small space to check. 

One of the closets is completely empty save for some mothballs at the bottom, and the other has a couple pillowcases and three towels that Tony hopes were always gray. 

“Bingo,” he says, holding up one and shaking it out. The fabric is thin and frayed, but beggars really can’t be choosers. “We’ve got three.”

He sets them down on the edge of the bed to be moved later and joins Steve in the kitchen. “What do we have in here?”

Steve crosses his arms over his chest and leans back against one of the counters. “Not much, but definitely better than most. Fridge has moldy cheese and jam. Cabinets have a few cans of fruit, some Spaghettios, and soup. Freezer has a couple frozen dinners that shouldn’t be too bad, though, and the oven and stove seem to be working just fine if you’re hungry.”

Tony is hungry, and a glance at the analog clock that’s ticking on the wall confirms that it’s well past the time he would have normally eaten. He opens the freezer and easily finds the frozen meals, seeing as there’s nothing else in there. 

“Do you want the salisbury steak that may or may not be real beef or the turkey and mashed potatoes?”

Steve laughs softly, “I’ll take the steak, I guess. Wouldn’t want to subject your stomach to maybe fake beef.”

“You’re a supersoldier,” Tony says, pulling open cabinets to find a baking sheet to put the tin foil trays of food on while Steve gets the oven started. “You’ll recover from it. I, on the other hand, would probably die from whatever the hell is in this.”

“Interesting that you think the steak is fake but the turkey is real.”

Tony finds what he’s looking for and pops open the seals on the cardboard boxes. “The steak is overcompensating with the apple cobbler on the side, which means it’s hiding something.”

He lays them out on the baking sheet and checks the instructions again, then hops up on the counter while he waits for the oven to heat. Leaning back against one of the cabinets, their predicament starts to slowly sink in. 

He’s stuck fifty years in the past with a man with whom his current relationship is tenuous at best, and if things go wrong again, his daughter will be growing up without a father in her timeline, while she’ll never get a chance to exist in this one. Plus, they’ll never get to bring everyone back like they planned, and Peter - Tony swallows hard at just the thought of his name - will truly be lost forever. 

For about the thousandth time in his life he’s forced to think about just how many lives rest in his hands right now, and his own is the least of his concern. There’s more than a billion people who are counting on him, and he’s failed them once already. He doesn’t know how he can possibly take it if he fails again. 

He almost wants to talk to Steve about it, but he isn’t really in the mood for a rousing speech on duty or hope or whatever the hell else Steve would manage to come up with. Steve isn’t one for just wallowing, not even for a moment, and Tony’s mind drifts to wonder how he manages that. How he manages to keep moving after all of this, with how much he’s lost already. 

Tony knows why he fights himself- to compensate for all the hurt and suffering he unwittingly caused for decades - but he doesn’t know why Steve still does. If Tony were him, he sure as hell wouldn’t be doing it anymore. He would’ve packed it up years ago, after the alien invasion that must have felt like stepping into a completely different world. 

“You’re thinking too much over there,” Steve says. “Experience says that’s never a good thing.”

Tony smiles, “I’d be offended if it wasn’t true.”

Steve’s voice is gentle as he offers, “Want to talk about it?”

“Experience says we’re not very good at that.”

“Well, it also says that terrible things have a tendency to happen when we don’t.”

“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, huh?” Tony muses. “Nothing to talk about, though. Just contemplating our impending demise is all.”

“No one’s dying, Tony,” Steve says, firm enough that Tony wants to believe it.

He bites his tongue so he doesn’t say that they already did, billions gone because he and Steve couldn’t see eye to eye once. Or ever, really. 

Instead he asks, “Think the others are having as hard a time as us?”

“Do I think the others travelled to a second point in time on a spur of the moment decision because they fucked up the original plan, then destroyed some Pym particles and got themselves stuck without a way home?” Steve says, deadpan. “No, somehow I think this situation is unique to us.”

Tony stares at him for a long moment before dissolving into laughter. Steve joins in, and it’s definitely hysterical this time, but neither of them seem to be able to stop. He laughs until he can’t breathe anymore and tears are blurring his vision. 

“Oh, God. You’re probably right on that one.” Tony wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand.

“I’m sure they’re doing just fine,” Steve smiles. “Less people to contend with where they went.”

“Just alien planets they’ve never been to before.”

“This was never a very good plan, was it?” Steve sighs. 

“There was never going to be a better option, and we all knew the risks going into it. We all decided the chance was worth it.”

“And what if it’s not?”

Tony raises an eyebrow. “Is that pessimism I’m hearing from Captain America?”

“More like doubt you’re hearing from Steve Rogers, who’s really tired of messing things up.”

So much for the rousing speech Tony was expecting. He supposes that even Steve has his limits, even if they’ve never been seen before. 

Tony hops off the counter and moves to stand next to Steve, leaving an inch between them as he leans against the counter. 

Comfort has never been his forte. Some would even say that he doesn’t even know the definition of it, and they wouldn’t exactly be wrong. But Steve has a deep crease between his eyebrows and a sadness in his eyes that wasn’t there just a few minutes ago, so Tony will try for his sake. 

“Are we talking about it?” Tony asks. 

“Talking about what?”

“The thing we’ve been avoiding talking about for five years now. I mean, I know I yelled and you just stood there and took it, but that’s not really talking, is it? I said what I needed to say, but you never did.”

Steve looks down at the checkered linoleum tiles beneath their feet. “There wasn’t anything more to say. You were right, and I was wrong, and that’s that.”

Tony hums thoughtfully, “You know, as much as I like people admitting that I was right, I think maybe we could both just admit that it wasn’t as black and white as we wanted it to be. We both made mistakes, we caused a lot of damage, and there’s no excuse for it. But I already told you that I’m done resenting you for yours, and I hope you don’t resent me for mine and we can move on from it.”

“I never blamed you,” Steve says. “You never - you never did anything wrong.”

Tony shakes his head, “Maybe not in that moment, if that’s how you want to view it, but in all the moments leading up to it? Siberia doesn’t happen without the accords, and the accords don’t happen without Ultron, which happened because of me. None of us were blameless, Steve. Don’t put the weight of all it on you.” 

He looks up from the floor, meeting Tony’s eyes. The sadness has mostly faded, and there’s a touch of humor in them now. “Sounds like you’ve thought about it an awful lot.”

Tony shrugs, “Yeah, well, Pepper made me see a therapist. A condition before she would marry me, because apparently I wouldn’t know what healthy coping mechanism looked like if it bit me in the ass. The ironic part of that is that coping mechanisms really only came in handy during the divorce.”

Steve laughs, then quickly apologizes for the reaction, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh at that. It’s really not funny.”

“Kind of is. I mean, no one’s really surprised that we couldn’t make a marriage work when we broke up three times before it.”

“Three? I thought it was just the once.”

“That was the longest, yeah, but there were some shorter ones. A lot of almost break ups, too. Things that would have made a normal couple run for the hills without question.”

“I was still sorry to hear about the divorce, though. I was hoping you could make it work. You deserve to be happy.”

Tony bumps him with his shoulder. “So do you, you know?”

Steve looks at him for a long time before he finally nods. “We could all stand to have some happiness after this.”

Tony agrees with that wholeheartedly. Natasha deserves a break from running everything. Clint deserves to have his family back. Bruce, well, Tony doesn’t exactly know what he’s up to these days, but he deserves some peace at the very least, and so does Thor after everything he’s been through. 

“We could,” Tony says, then he hesitates. “So seeing Peggy again. That must have been… I don’t know what it must have been. Never been reunited with a long lost lover from seventy years ago, but I’m going to go with weird.”

“I’d say that’s an understatement,” Steve says dryly. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“About as much as you want to talk about our impending demise.”

Tony laughs and claps a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Yeah, alright. Let’s move on to sleeping arrangements, then. I call the left side of the bed. You can have the right, and I’ll try not to steal all the blankets this time.”

“Oh, great.”


	4. Chapter 4

True to her word, Peggy returns the following evening with armfuls of supplies. There are a few different sets of clothing for each of them, though Tony has no idea how she knew their exact sizes, some kitchen staples like bread and milk, and more frozen dinners and cans of soup. Peggy correctly assumes that neither one of them is a decent cook, hence all the premade items. 

She takes a seat at the kitchen table, legs crossed primly at the ankles and posture perfectly straight. As usual, she gets right down to business while Steve and Tony are still pulling out their own chairs. 

“I will admit that when I first brought you here, I was still undecided on whether or not to believe your story,” Peggy starts. “As I am sure you are aware, it’s quite the tale, but I am choosing to believe it on the notion that if you are somehow imposters, it will simply count as keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. But I would advise not to mistake my assistance as blind trust.”

Tony bites back an amused smile while Steve is attempting to look serious as he says, “We understand. There’s not much we can do to offer proof, and, well, frankly I expected nothing less from you.”

“We both know there’s a gun under your skirt, and I’m going to guess there’s a knife somewhere, too,” Tony says lightly, enjoying the way Peggy’s face turns a touch bewildered at how he knows that. “Although, maybe you haven’t started carrying that just yet. It was there by the time I was a kid, though, so if it’s not there, just give it some time for whatever event prompted that.”

Steve kicks him sharply under the table, managing to find the exact same spot he bruised the last time he did that. 

“What?” Tony asks, unbothered even when Steve glares at him. “I’m just saying that I’m aware she could shoot us at any time if she wanted, and maybe, possibly, stab us, too. I’m just not actually sure if she started carrying the knife yet or not.” 

He turns back to Peggy and lifts his left hand up, spreading his fingers to show the small scar in the webbing between his thumb and index finger. “When I’m about four, you’re maybe not going to want to bring it with you when you visit. I mean, your call, but you seemed pretty mad at the time, and it’s not like I learned my lesson, anyway.”

Peggy opens and closes her mouth, and Tony takes a special sort of pride in being able to render her speechless. He’s never managed it before, even when he somehow stole a knife right off of her. Though, he supposes, having someone you’ve never met before start talking about a future interaction you’ve had together might be a little weirder than slipping a knife out of her boot when she was distracted. 

She ends up smiling, saying, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“It was sometime around August 1974.”

“Will you have a habit of stealing things off of me?”

Tony shrugs, smirking, “Guess you’ll have to wait and find out.”

Peggy laughs, the kind of laugh he hasn’t heard from her in years, and his chest hurts a little. He was so focused on what it was like for Steve to see her again that he let himself forget about his own emotions about it. Steve’s romantic love for her doesn’t actually overshadow the familial love Tony has; it only felt like it should. 

Tony swallows and looks down at his hands, trying not to let too much of the emotion show. Now isn’t the time and this definitely isn’t the place. 

He clears his throat and jumps into the making of the game plan to distract himself, “Steve and I think it would be best if I could infiltrate Camp Lehigh. We don’t want to ask you to steal the particles yourself, given the risk, but if there was a way to get me into the science division, I would be able to track their creation and find the right time to take them. 

“There is also the issue of the, um,  _ other  _ thing we took from Lehigh yesterday, and ensuring that it goes unnoticed. Honestly, that might end up being the bigger problem, but if Howard was to suddenly be needed somewhere very, very far away from here, well…” Tony trails off with a pointed look. 

Peggy raises her eyebrows, “That could probably be arranged. Any date in particular he should be back by?”

Tony shrugs, understanding the meaning behind the question without needing clarification, “My mother might like it if he was back by May 29th. For no particular reason at all.”

“Surely.”

Steve leans forward in his chair, resting his forearms on the table. “It won’t be a problem to do that?”

“There’s always something that could use his attention,” Peggy says. “I’ve never had too hard of a time persuading him when absolutely necessary.”

Tony remembers that, too - Peggy being the only one that could ever make him change his mind once it was made up. He always used to wonder how she managed it, but now he thinks it was likely because she was the only one who ever truly had his respect. 

“And getting Tony into Lehigh?”

Peggy sighs, “A little more difficult, but not impossible. Is it a fair assumption that you have qualifications that could get you into the science division? Or will we need another way?”

“I could probably pass a scientist,” Tony grins. 

“He’ll probably combust from trying to resist fixing everyone else’s mistakes,” Steve says dryly. “Don’t be surprised if he somehow manages to get himself promoted within a day.”

“Hey,” Tony holds up his hands in defense. “I can hold back enough not to disrupt an entire timeline with technology they aren’t ready for yet. This is not my first stealth mission.”

It’s far from his first, but he can’t help but hope that it’s his last. This one has barely begun and he already feels drained from it. The only good thing is that when he finally does make it back home, at least only a minute will have passed there. 

Peggy smiles, “Alright, if you can prove your worth to be hired, then we just need a story of where you’ve come from, and how I know you.”

“Well, on the bright side, I’ve already established a fake name at Lehigh and made myself a doctor with it. On the not so bright side, it’s not a great name.”

Peggy looks at him warily, as does Steve, who hasn’t yet heard his fake name. “What is it, and to whom did you give it?”

“I might have introduced myself to my father as Howard Potts.”

“Oh, God,” Steve mutters. “That’s the best you could do? Really? You just took his name right from him.”

“You know what, Steve? When you unexpectedly come face to face with your dead father, I would like to see you do any better.”

“I’m not saying I would, but I am saying you should’ve,” Steve laughs. “You’re the supposed genius.” 

Peggy turns the conversation back to the original focus, cutting off Tony’s retort, “If Howard is already off the base by the time we get you in, the name can be changed. Is there anyone else who heard it?”

Tony shakes his head, “I don’t believe so.”

“You should be alright to stick with Anthony, seeing as no one else would be surprised by it. The last name should work fine as well. Potts, did you say?”

“Yeah.”

Steve just barely manages to suppress his laugh this time. Tony decides that turnabout is fair play and kicks him under the table, then gives him his best innocent look when Steve narrows his eyes at him. 

“Problem, Steven?”

“Is this how it always is when the two of you work together?” Peggy asks, amusement in her voice. “If so, I can’t say I’m surprised that your original plan, whatever that may have been, did not go so well.”

“If by that you mean generally chaotic, then yes,” Tony says. “It’s part of our charm.”

Peggy hums noncommittally. “So we have our name, now we just need our story.”

They sit in contemplative silence for a moment, then Tony asks, “How well do your coworkers know your family?”

“Are you planning on faking a British accent?” Steve raises his eyebrows. “I don’t think you can pull it off.”

Tony rolls his eyes, “If they aren’t familiar with Peggy’s family, there’s no reason she can’t have some sort of distant American cousin who happens to be a scientist. A few forged documents and a couple fake anecdotes about a great grandmother who doesn’t exist and there’s no reason for anyone to question the story.”

Peggy considers it for a moment. “I’ll need some time to get the documents in order from a contact, but otherwise I see no problem with it. Howard is the only one who might question it, but with him gone, we’ll be just fine.”

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Steve asks her, a serious, worried look on his face. “We wouldn’t want any fallout to come back on you.”

“Then I suppose Anthony will just have to be a better thief this time around.” 

Steve flushes and admits, “Actually, this one was on me. I dropped the particles.”

“In that case, there’s nothing to worry about,” she says, standing from the table. Tony and Steve stand as well, following along as she drifts towards the door. “I’ll work on getting Howard out of the base tomorrow, as well as the documents for the new identity.”

Steve nods, “Thank you again.”

Peggy smiles softly, “One last time saving your life. How could I refuse?”

Tony once again feels like he’s intruding on their moment, and he hangs back as the final goodbyes are made. 

Before she walks out the door, she turns back to say, “I’ll be back in a couple of days with updates. In the meantime, try to keep yourselves out of trouble, alright?”

“Of course,” Steve says. 

Peggy turns to look at Tony, her gaze lingering on him for a moment and making him feel exposed. She always could see right through him before, and he wonders if that’s changed at all, but she walks out without another word. 


	5. Chapter 5

It takes almost a week for everything to be in place for Tony to go back to Lehigh, but by the end of the wait, Anthony Steven Potts has a birth certificate, a social security number, and a driver’s license. Peggy chose the middle name for him, finding it fitting for the current situation. Steve, of course, thought it was funny, and the only reason Tony didn’t complain was because she’s the one taking him to and from the base every day during his “employment.”

His first morning in the car with her starts off awkward, neither of them seeming to know what to say. She doesn’t know him at all, and while he knows almost everything about her, none of the things they used to be able to talk about are appropriate here. 

“We are close in the future, aren’t we?” Peggy asks him after a few minutes, and Tony looks up in surprise. 

“I can’t say too much, but yes. Just try to act surprised in a couple of months when Howard makes you my godmother.”

Peggy raises an eyebrow, “He chooses me for that?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but he didn’t have a whole lot of other options. He was never exactly good at making friends.”

Peggy is quiet for a long moment before she says, “I get the feeling you don’t have the best relationship with the man.”

“That’s in the saying too much category, I think.”

“Is there really much harm in telling me about it?”

“Would you honestly be able to listen to me talk about my relationship with him and do nothing to fix it?” Tony asks in return. “Because I don’t think you would, and I don’t know what kind of person I would be if my life had been different growing up. I don’t know if things would have been better or worse, but I think that some of the bad things that happened to me ended up creating something good.”

She nods, and her grip on the steering wheel is tight. “I understand that. I understand all of it when the both of you have left pieces out of the story, but it is frustrating. I would like to think that things could be fixed if given the chance.”

Tony smiles wryly, “There was this one time where I thought I could avoid a version of the future that I’d seen, and do you want to know what happened?”

“What?”

“I created a murderous robot intent on destroying all of humanity,” Tony says, deadpan. “On accident, of course. I had no way of knowing that would happen, and all of my intentions were good, but it doesn’t change the outcome.”

Peggy huffs a laugh, “The strange thing is that I can’t quite tell if you’re serious or not. Murderous robots that’s…” She shakes her head, trailing off. 

“Sounds like something Asimov wrote? Yeah, I know it does. The future’s weird,” Tony replies. “But the point of it is that trying to change a future that hasn’t happened yet doesn’t always go so well, because you never know if your fix is actually a fix or not.”

“So what does that leave us to talk about then? What’s left that doesn’t give anything life changing away?”

Tony purses his lips, thinking, “Maybe place a bet on the Yankees in ‘77.”

Peggy laughs, “I was thinking more of the future that I wouldn’t be able to change. Like Steve. I can’t change that now without knowing where he is, but it can’t hurt to know what his life is like now, can it?” She senses Tony’s hesitation and continues, “I just want to know if he’s happy. If things worked out alright for him. I moved on years ago. I’d like to know if he had the chance to do the same.”

“Are you fishing for information on his love life? Are we gossiping right now?”

“Well, I’d ask him myself but I know he would hold back. He would think he was sparing my feelings, but there’s no need for that. I’ve been married for almost twenty years and have two teenagers. As much as I loved him once, as much as I always will, it doesn’t bother me to know that he’s moved on.”

“I don’t think he really ever did,” Tony admits, making Peggy’s expression turn sad. He’s quick to amend, “Not just from you. From the whole waking up in the future thing. I don’t think he ever really got comfortable in it, not enough to let go of the past.”

“There hasn’t been anyone?”

Tony remembers hearing from Natasha about a kiss and an almost maybe with someone, then he freezes when he remembers who it was with. Definitely not a good call to tell her about her ex kissing her niece forty years from now. 

“Uh, no, not really. I mean, there was almost someone, but it didn’t really work out. Not sure what happened there.”

“And what about you?”

“What about me?”

“I couldn’t help but notice that the couch hadn’t been used for sleeping.”

Tony laughs in surprise, “Oh, God, no. That’s - no.”

She isn’t the first one to mention the possibility of it, and Tony would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about it before. In fact, he’d be about a hundred times richer than he already is if he had a dollar for every time the thought popped into his head. There was even a time once, many years ago, when he thought it was close to coming true. Back when everyone was living with him at the tower and it felt like the first real family he’d ever had, and Steve was a constant presence. 

During one of those first break ups with Pepper that he told no one about, he came close to confessing to Steve. To admitting slow brewing feelings that he didn’t quite understand, because Steve was his friend, and he’d never felt that way about a friend before. He never waited up for his friends to get back from nights out, never lingered at the dinner table to always be the last two, never arrived early to movie nights just to secure the seat next to them. 

But then life got in the way. 

S.H.I.E.L.D. fell apart in D.C., and Steve started going more than he was coming. Then Ultron happened, and it felt like they were hardly friends anymore, let alone two people on the cusp of more. The accords, the Winter Soldier, Siberia and Steve’s lies of omission. Those were the last straws, blowing apart everything Tony once thought he had. He spent a long time picking up the pieces of himself after that, only to realize there were so many that Steve took with him. 

He went back to what he knew, and he knows enough now to be able to admit that being with Pepper and starting over there was the safest option. The option that allowed him to escape from thinking about what could have been by giving him something that just was. 

And now, he isn’t quite sure where they stand anymore. There’s more than ten years of history between them, and so much of it is bad. They’ve spent more times at odds than they’ve spent united, and Tony has come to realize that what he thought they almost had might have been all in his own head. 

The end of the world has good for one thing at least - there’s no time to think about the man he maybe could have loved once. So of course Peggy Carter is the one to dredge it all up again. 

“We’ve shared beds on missions before. We’re used to it,” Tony explains. It hasn’t happened too often, but that night at Clint’s farmhouse automatically comes to mind. Steve held him that night when the crushing weight of guilt and anxiety became too much to handle silently on his own, even though he was still so angry with him. 

“Nothing there at all then?” Peggy questions, and Tony knows that there’s no way she can actually see through him right now, having never met him before, but it still feels like it. She’s always been disarming in that way, and it’s probably why she’s still the best spy he’s ever met. (He apologizes to Natasha in his head for that thought, but he won’t take it back.)

“You know, if Steve and I had traveled back to the late nineties, there would be a perfect analogy for the kind of relationship we had, but Ross and Rachel don’t exist yet, and I’m pretty unfamiliar with what’s popular on TV right now, so let’s just go with sort of yes, sort of no, and leave it at that.” 

“Hm, you know, I did that once with someone for quite a while,” Peggy says pointedly. “I knew it could have been something more, but I ignored it for so long that I eventually lost my chance.”

“And let me guess, then he kind of died and showed up on your doorstep twenty five years later?”

Peggy smiles, and it’s bittersweet. “I had a lot of regrets after I lost him. I wished I hadn’t wasted my time denying how I felt. I wished we could have that first date I was promised.”

“But you’re fine now, aren’t you?” Tony asks. “You said you moved on. And I’ve met your husband, and Elizabeth and Michael, too. You always seemed happy with the way things turned out.”

“Of course I’m happy with the life I have. But that doesn’t mean I don’t regret not taking the chance I had. It would have ended up much the same I’m sure, but at least I would have had the time to truly love him before it happened.”

Tony bites his lip, looking out the car window at the blur of trees as they head out of the city and towards the base. “So just to be clear, I’ve got your blessing to date your ex-boyfriend? Not that I’m going to, because I honestly don’t think he’s interested in that, but you’re really cool with it?”

Peggy laughs, “If it matters to you, then yes, you do.”

It does matter, oddly enough, but Tony still doesn’t think it will make much of a difference. What could have been is gone, and if Steve ever wanted him before, he doesn’t now. Too much time has passed, and they’ve made too many mistakes. Hurt each other too much. Forgiving is one thing, but loving is a different ballgame, and he isn’t sure he knows how to play anymore. 

She pats his knee lightly, then puts her hand back on the steering wheel right after the brief contact. “Just something to think about is all.”

Tony nods, and he’s more than okay with letting the conversation die out for the rest of the ride to Lehigh. 


	6. Chapter 6

His first day at Lehigh is just shy of a disaster, all things considered. Hank Pym turns out to be a bit of an ass, unwilling to accept anyone new into his area, which Tony can understand to a degree. He did, after all, just lose a substantial amount of his work, and from what Tony has heard of the man, he wasn’t very trusting to begin with. 

“Is he going to be a problem?” Steve asks after Tony relays this part of his day. 

Tony shrugs, stepping out of his dress shoes. They don’t quite fit him right, and the blisters that finally healed yesterday are coming right back. 

“Could be, but I don’t really need to be working with him right now to be able to steal them later. It’s probably better that I’m not, actually. Less suspicious when I disappear the day after the particles are taken. I mean, it’s not like Peggy can be fired when she’s a founder, but it’s better if it doesn’t look like she had something to do with it.”

Steve stands from the couch, walking behind it, then leans back against it with his arms folded over his chest and his legs crossed at the ankles. It’s such a classic Captain America pose for him that Tony almost laughs. 

“Have we considered slowly taking them?” Steve asks. “One vial per week, and editing whatever log he has for them instead of taking them all at once at the end?”

“I think he might be the kind of paranoid that has more than one log, honestly. Especially after the last batch was taken. And if he’s anything like me, he would know the exact number with or without a log to verify it,” Tony says as he hangs his suit jacket in the closet. “Us scientists are all just a little insane.”

“I believe it,” Steve says wryly. 

“Hey, I’m allowed to call myself out on it, but you’re not allowed to agree.”

“Oh, are those the rules?”

Tony smiles, and he sits down at the edge of the bed, leaning back on his hands. “They are. Please follow them in the future.”

Steve opens his mouth, and Tony can see the joke coming, so he interrupts, “If you’re about to say something about how we’re in the past, which means you don’t have to follow it yet, I’m leaving you in 1970.”

Steve grins, holding his hands up in mock surrender, “Not going to say it. Wouldn’t want to get stuck here.”

Tony lets himself flop back on the bed, and he feels the mattress dip when Steve comes to sit next to him. He turns his head, straining his neck to get a better look at him. His gray sweater is tight on his arms, but loose on the rest of him, and the pants he’s wearing cling to his thighs. Nothing quite fits him, yet he somehow looks perfect. 

“What did you do today?” Tony asks. 

Steve gestures across the room to the stack of books sitting next to the couch. Peggy brought them by the other day when she came with updates to their plan, and Steve has been filling the spare time by making his way through them and catching up on his 1970s television shows. 

“Did you know Slaughterhouse-Five came out last year?”

“Huh.”

“It was already considered a classic by the time I got out of the ice.”

“A lot of things were. Pretty sure you were alive when The Great Gatsby came out.”

Steve lays back next to him, arm touching his, and he smiles, “I remember getting a copy of it during the war, actually.”

“Really?”

“They had these Armed Services Editions of a bunch of different books that they gave to all the soldiers. Pretty sure all of us read that one.”

“Bet it would be valuable now if you still had it.”

“I think it’s somewhere at the bottom of the Arctic.” 

“Damn.”

“Yeah, I think my copy of Huckleberry Finn went with it.” 

Sometimes Tony forgets just how old Steve is until he says things like that. He still looks young, and excluding his time in the ice, he’s only in his thirties, but he’s seen so much. 

Steve stands from the bed and goes towards the kitchen. Tony sits up again to watch him as he opens the freezer door and holds up two boxes, “So did you want chicken pot pie or fried chicken for dinner?”

“Why does it feel like I’ve just walked into a shitty old school sitcom, and you’re the housewife here?”

Steve leans against the refrigerator, cocking his hip and putting his hand on it. He plays along with it surprisingly well. “Well, you did just have a long day at work, dear, and I should be taking care of my man.”

Tony falls back, covering his face with hands as he laughs, “Oh, fuck, I am begging you to never say anything like that again.”

“I should ask Peggy to bring me an apron the next time she comes back.”

“Please do. I’d love to see it.”

Steve grins, and he holds up the boxes again, “Alright, now answer the question. Which one of these questionable meals do you want?”

“Whichever. They all taste the same to me now.”

Steve hums in agreement as he turns on the oven. “I will definitely not miss these once we leave. They make me want to learn how to cook.”

“Are you looking forward to going back?” Tony asks, his conversation with Peggy this morning still lingering in the back of his mind. Steve gives him a confused look over his shoulder, so he elaborates, “I mean besides the whole saving the world thing.”

“Where are you going with this, Tony?”

“I was just thinking that after this, with everything we know about time travel, you could go back to any point you wanted to, really,” Tony says, trying to sound casual about it even though his heart is in his throat. “Back to ‘45, right after you crashed in the Arctic. Get that dance you always wanted. Change the outcome for yourself.”

Steve is quiet for a while, and his face is unreadable when he turns around to lean against the kitchen counter. “I told you once that the person that went in the ice wasn’t the same person that came out of it.”

“Ultron,” Tony says, staring down at his socked feet. He wonders where Peggy got them from, who’s ridiculously patterned clothes these actually are. “I remember.”

“I missed it all at first, sure. I wanted to go back, and I wouldn’t have hesitated to if time travel existed back then. But then you gave me a home, and the Avengers gave me a family, and all of those things I thought I wanted once seemed like a distant memory.”

“They don’t have to be anymore, though. That’s what I’m saying. It could be a reality for you.”

“Technically that’s true, I suppose,” Steve agrees. “But my ma used to tell me that things happened for a reason. My father died for a reason, I was born scrawny as all hell for a reason, she got sick for a reason.”

“Well that’s dark.”

Steve cracks a smile, “Yeah, I used to think so, too. Thought it was just a way of making it so I wouldn’t be too sad about all of it.”

“Did it work?”

“Sometimes, yeah,” Steve shrugs. “Kept me from feeling angry at the world when I lost her, but only because I knew she wouldn’t have liked that. The point is that I don’t think I really believed it until recently. Not when I found myself seventy years in the future and couldn’t find one damn reason for it. Not after New York was almost levelled by aliens, or when I found out Bucky was still alive, or when Ultron happened. Especially not after Siberia.” 

“Are you saying you found a reason recently, then?” Tony asks, because he doesn’t see one in any of that, either, and doesn’t know how Steve could have found one in the time since. If anything things have made even less sense for Tony in the last few years. 

“Yeah, I think I did.”

He doesn’t look like he plans on elaborating on that, so Tony doesn’t ask, even though he wants to. Tony thinks he gets it anyway. Restoring the lives of billions of people is one hell of a reason, and if the plane crash never happened, he wouldn’t be around for it. So instead Tony asks, “This whole thing really doesn’t make you change your mind about that? Doesn’t make you want what you could have had again?”

“Should it?”

“You can think that you have a reason for being in the future and still want the past. After we finish this, the reason doesn’t exist anymore.”

Steve looks at him for a long moment. There’s something in his eyes that Tony can’t describe, can’t quite pin down. “This mission isn’t the reason, Tony. Not the only one, anyway.”

Tony doesn’t have the time to formulate a response before Steve continues, “It took me a long time to make peace with the life I have now. Longer than I wish it had, really. But now it’s the only life that I want. I don’t want to stay here, I don’t want to go further back. I just want to go home. Isn’t that what you want, too?”

“It’s all I want,” Tony says, missing Morgan so much that it hurts. He pictures her face on the night before he left and prays to anyone who will listen that it isn’t the last image he’ll ever get to have. 

Steve nods slowly, “Then that’s what we’re going to do.”

He says it in that tone that invites no disagreement, the one that has the ability to make people follow him into the trenches every time. Tony stopped trusting it once, but he believes it now. 

He stands from the bed, coming into the kitchen and says, “I want the pot pie.”

Steve laughs, “It’s all yours.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter got so insanely out of hand when I wrote it. it was meant to be pure domestic fluff, but it didn't turn out that way at all lol

The rest of the week passes much the same as that first day. Peggy picks Tony up for work every morning, and he tries not to advance the S.H.I.E.L.D. science department past where they should be for the early 1970s. It means letting a few mistakes slide when he is the only one that catches them in the room full of people, which kills him just a little, though he knows it’s a necessary precaution to keep this timeline from branching off too far. 

When the day is done, she takes him back to the apartment, where Steve is waiting for him. Tony gives updates on the Pym particles, Steve tells him about the book he’s currently on, and it’s so horribly domestic that Tony could scream. Not because he hates it, but because he actually likes it more than he should. 

He likes having Steve to come home to, likes making jokes over canned soup that tastes like tin, likes getting into bed together at night and waking up together in the morning. Sometimes he ends up on Steve’s side of the bed, chest pressed to Steve’s back, and sometimes it’s the other way around. They never talk about it, but Tony thinks he isn’t the only one that likes that part of it even more than the others. 

Saturday afternoon is spent sitting on the carpeted floor, drinking orange juice with straws for no reason other than they can and a deck of cards scattered around them while Tony tries to remember the rules to war. They tried playing speed first, because the rules were simple enough to remember off the top of his head, but super soldiers win reflex games every time.

“Did we say aces were high or low?” Steve asks, flipping over a jack next to Tony’s ace. 

“I think it was high.”

“You’re just saying that so you can win this one.”

Tony grins, “So what if I am?”

Steve shakes his head with a smile and pushes the cards in Tony’s direction, “Alright, fine. I’ll let you cheat, because we both know it’s the only way you’ll win.”

“Are you seriously trash talking me over a game of luck right now?” 

“So what if I am?” 

Tony laughs, and he flips over his next card to reveal a three that Steve takes with his eight. They tie with fives on the next one, and Steve asks, “What are the rules for a tie?”

“Uh, I think you do three cards, and it’s whoever wins the last one,” Tony says, but he isn’t sure. 

Steve puts down three cards while saying, “You know, when I first got to the future, I was irrationally angry at Google, but now I miss it.”

“Why were you angry at Google?” Tony puts his three down across from Steve’s, then claims the entire pile of them with his ten against Steve’s four. 

“I don’t really know. I guess it just represented the entire future for me. Some program that knew everything, made it so you didn’t have to talk to anyone or go to a library for answers anymore. Made a lot of old school things obsolete,” Steve shrugs. “Like I said, it wasn’t rational.”

“What is it with the older generation’s focus on face to face communication? As if it isn’t real just because it happens through a screen.”

Steve gives him a wry smile. “Am I supposed to represent all of the old people here?”

“Obviously you’re the best source. You’re the only ninety year old man that I know.”

“I’m a hundred and four, actually.”

“Oh, God,” Tony says, his face scrunching up as he processes that. “When did that happen?”

Steve, the sarcastic ass that he is, says, “Last year.”

Tony rolls his eyes, tossing down a seven between them. “I can’t believe I missed your hundredth birthday. All those golden opportunities to make fun of you wasted.”

“I’m sure you’ll find plenty more.”

Tony sighs wistfully, “That’s true. There’s always something when you’re around.”

Steve picks up his nine with a queen, then puts down a two. “It was right after the snap happened.”

“What?” Tony reaches for the two and his five, frowning at Steve in confusion. 

“My hundredth birthday,” Steve says, keeping his gaze on the cards in his hands and continuing to play despite the solemn turn in conversation. “It was a month after it. Bucky and Sam were gone, you were still in the hospital, and we’d just found out that Thanos destroyed the stones. Natasha was the only one who remembered it. She gave me a cupcake at the end of the day, and she said that the bright side was that no birthday could possibly get worse than that.”

Tony huffs a laugh, “Sounds like she was challenging the universe with that one.”

“That’s what I said, too, but she said that the universe had already spited us enough to make it even.”

“She’s got a fair point.”

“She usually does.”

Tony puts down the same ace he collected from Steve earlier and loses it back to him. There’s probably something symbolic in that if he really thought about it, but he isn’t quite bored enough to be seeing deeper meaning in card games just yet. 

“So a hundred and five this year, then?” Tony says with a smile. “Got any plans? A hot date with someone a quarter your age?”

Steve grimaces, “Oh, God, don’t phrase it like that.”

“You could go for half your age instead, I guess. Find yourself a nice fifty two year old to settle down with.” 

It only strikes him after he says it that it’s his exact age, and Steve notices it, too. 

“Would that make you age appropriate or age inappropriate for me? I can’t really tell what we’re saying here.”

Tony shrugs, “Well, unless you actually want to date a fellow senior citizen, I think we’ll have to say anyone half your age or younger is considered appropriate.”

“Who says I want to date anyone at all?”

Tony loses another card to Steve, his stack slowly dwindling. “Alright, what is the plan then? After all of this is done, what are you doing if it’s not going back in time or finding someone to be with in the present?”

“I don’t have a plan.”

Tony opens his mouth, and Steve clamps a hand over it immediately. “I swear if you sing that song to me, I’ll be the one leaving you in 1970.”

When Steve removes his hand, Tony grins, “But you’re the Star Spangled Man with a Plan.”

“Enjoy your fake frozen steak and no internet for the next couple decades.”

“Please, do you really think that if I was truly stuck here I wouldn’t just invent the internet myself to get it back?” Tony scoffs. “The ‘70s would be getting smartphones tomorrow.” 

Steve laughs, and Tony asks, “Really, though, you don’t have anything you want to do? Not even one thing?”

Steve puts down a six, and Tony collects it with his ten. The next three matches go to him as well, and the game goes back even for the time being. 

Eventually, he says, “Think someone else will want the shield?”

Tony raises an eyebrow, “Do you want someone else to have it?”

“I think it’s time someone else saved the world for a change,” Steve says, and he looks up from his cards to meet Tony’s eyes directly. “Is that selfish?”

“No, I don’t think it is.”

“Other people might.”

“Other people haven’t spent most of their lives fighting battles. They don’t get a say on when it’s time to quit.”

Steve puts down a nine to claim Tony’s eight. “And what about you?”

“What about me?”

“When’s your time to quit?”

Tony rotates the king of hearts between his fingers a few times, watching it as it spins. “I’m not sure there ever is one for me. When I’m six feet under, maybe.”

Steve sets his stack cards face down on the floor, leaning forward with his forearms on his bent knees. “That’s no way to live.”

“And you would know?”

“I might be the only one who knows it as well as you,” Steve says, and Tony looks back down at the card so he doesn’t have to look at him. “You’ve done your part. The world can learn how to live without Iron Man.”

“I know it can,” Tony says, and he actually means it. “But my work doesn’t stop when the armor comes off. If anything it’s just beginning.”

“The world can learn how to live without Tony Stark, too.”

“Do you have another genius billionaire philanthropist lying in wait to take my place?” Tony asks with sarcasm. He hates the phrase he used on the first day now, hates the way he felt the need to knock Steve down just to prove himself, and it doesn’t matter how many times they say it was the scepter’s fault. He knows he would have said it all anyway. But at least it comes in handy for mocking himself. 

“You forgot playboy.”

Tony laughs, “Hard to be a playboy with a four year old sleeping down the hall.”

Steve picks back up his cards, and Tony sets down the king, only for Steve to put down an ace. 

“Should’ve made them low,” Steve teases as he picks up both cards, and Tony laughs. 

“That’s what I get for trying to cheat the system, I guess.”

They play with their attention solely on the game for a couple of minutes, with Tony swearing dramatically when Steve takes another one of his high cards with an ace. 

He finds himself with less than third of the deck by the time he works up the nerve to say, “Can I ask you something?”

“Always.”

Tony bites his lip. He’s too old for something as simple as that to make him feel this much. “Did you ever - was there ever a time where you thought that maybe this could have been something?”

Steve frowns, “Our card game?”

“Us.”

Steve’s expression is blank for the longest time, and Tony sees the moment when he understands the question. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, and he puts down his next card slowly. 

“Did you?”

Tony smiles, “Answering a question with a question. Classic avoidance, Cap.”

“I don’t want to say yes if your answer is no.”

“I wouldn’t have asked if it was,” Tony replies, trying not to hang all of his hopes on that one sentence. He puts down his card, and they’re at a draw with a pair of threes. “But the thing is I was never quite sure if it was all in my head, or if maybe you felt the same way and were too afraid to say anything.”

Steve lays out his three cards and says, “I thought you had Pepper. There was never a chance for me when you had her.”

“We were broken up when it started with you.” Tony doesn’t even look as he sets down three of his, doesn’t know who won the match. Steve is looking at him intently, and he won’t be the first to break their locked stare. 

“When was that?” 

“You want the exact date?”

“Do you have one?”

“It was ten years ago in November when I realized it,” Tony says, and he can actually remember that first moment when all the pieces came into place. “Team Thanksgiving. Our first and last.”

Steve hugs his legs closer to his chest, his cards clutched tightly in one hand. “What happened then? What started it?”

Tony shrugs, “Nothing much, really. I just looked over at you, and I knew. I’d never wanted to keep someone so badly before.”

“And when did it end?” Steve asks, something scared and desperate in his voice. 

“Who says it did?”

“I put a shield through your chest.”

“Yeah, well, I shot off your best friend’s arm,” Tony retorts. “We already talked about it, Steve. It wasn’t black and white. Every one of us made mistakes.”

Steve shakes his head, looking away towards the small window above the bed. “I don’t know how you can forgive me for that when I can’t even forgive myself.”

“I stopped being angry a long time ago,” Tony sighs. “And after I was angry, I was sad, and then I just missed my friend.”

“We’re friends, then?” 

“I’d like to think we always have been, even when we were on opposite sides. I was never willing to call you my enemy.”

Steve nods, and he takes a deep breath before turning his head back. “I never thought of you like that, either.”

“Good,” Tony says, and he sticks out his hand with a fragile smile, “Now I would really love it if this could be the last time we bring it up again. It’s annoying to keep burying the hatchet again every time someone digs it up.”

Steve smiles as he puts his hand in Tony’s and shakes it. “You started it.”

“My topic started out unrelated, and you’re the one that related it.” Tony finally looks down at his cards and says, “Oh, look, I won that.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Steve says, but the smile that’s still on his face belies any real annoyance. “Just play your next card, Stark.”

“Bossy, Rogers.”

“Got a problem with that?”

Tony laughs, “Not at all.”

They keep playing the game, going back and forth so many times that it feels like it might never end. They don’t talk about feelings anymore or about the future, but Tony is actually okay with where it left off. Nothing got resolved, not really, but he feels lighter for it anyway. 


	8. Chapter 8

On Monday afternoon, Peggy waltzes into the science division in her high heels and asks Tony to come to her office. Her face looks stern, and when he looks around the room, he can see that every other person is averting their gaze, seeming to think he’s in trouble for something. If Tony didn’t know better, he would have thought so, too. 

As they walk down the hallway, she says, “Well, I think I just decided how I’m going to explain your sudden disappearance next week.”

Tony raises an eyebrow, turning the corner with her, “How’s that?”

“Everyone clearly just decided that I called you in my office to discipline you for something. It isn’t a stretch to say you were fired.”

Tony laughs, “Should I start making mistakes to make it more believable? I could probably cause some microexplosions. Maybe a small fire that destroys some important documents. With back ups, of course.”

“Maybe on your last day,” Peggy says with a smile. “Might make a decent diversion, actually, as long as you don’t cause any property damage.”

“I can probably avoid that. I’ve created my fair share of fires in my life.”

“On purpose or on accident?” she asks.

“Yes.”

Peggy turns them down one last hallway, and she stops briefly to speak to the secretary outside of her office, telling her that she will be unavailable for now and to take messages on any incoming calls. Opening the door to her office, she ushers Tony in ahead of her, then moves behind the desk to sit in her chair. 

Even on his first day, he never saw the inside of her office, and he looks around at it now. The walls hold a few certificates and awards, family photos, and a few with work colleagues. A picture of her with Howard and Steve catches his eye, and his gaze lingers on it for a while. If he had to guess, it was taken shortly before Steve got the serum, maybe even that same day. He stands much farther below the other two, and Howard’s arm around his shoulder makes him look even smaller. It strikes him then that he has only ever seen his father smile like that in pictures. 

“I like the reminder,” Peggy says, and Tony snaps his eyes away from the photograph to look at her. She points to it and continues, “And it helps, sometimes. To imagine what he would be thinking when I’m not quite sure what to do. What advice he would have.”

Tony gives her a tight smile, and he smooths down his tie as he takes a seat opposite her. “He does the same with you sometimes, you know.”

“Does it help him?”

Tony shrugs, “I can’t say for sure. We’ve never talked about it. But he keeps doing it, so I would guess so.”

Peggy leans forward in her chair, hands folded on the table, and apparently the sentimental part of the conversation is over. “I called you in here because I’ve heard that Hank has made some advancements on his research.”

“Would these advancements be the production of more particles?”

“He plans on running a test next week using them. On Monday, and from what I’ve gathered from the forms he submitted the test would use his existing supply completely. The forms are vague, as they always are from him, but I would assume the test involves quite a few vials.”

“Which means he’s spending this week synthesizing them.” Tony nods, leaning back and tapping a finger against his chin in thought. “And while that’s good, it also means they’ll be under his surveillance pretty closely. Harder to take them, and the timeline for opportunities just got a lot shorter than we thought.”

“He tends to work late most days, but even later before conducting experiments. I doubt he’ll hardly leave his lab for the next few days, and he locks them in a safe and takes his keys with him when he goes home, so unless you’re an expert at breaking into safes, we can’t simply wait for him to leave.”

Tony shakes his head, “Can’t say that I am.”

“Looks like we might need that fire after all.”

Tony considers it, then asks, “Is there a protocol here for fire evacuations?”

“There is,” Peggy nods. “Particularly for chemical fires. One of the scientists started a rather nasty one last year, and it’s been in place since.” 

“Sprinkler system?”

“Yes. We might lose some things to it, but nothing that can’t be replaced I’m sure.”

“Any way to turn it off?”

Peggy raises an eyebrow, “Probably, but I can’t imagine why we would want it off.”

“If it’s on and water is destroying his research, he’s not going to be so quick to evacuate. It’s his life’s work. He’ll stay behind to protect it, even if it violates protocol. Off, however, I’m willing to bet he would leave it behind,” Tony reasons, thinking about what he would do in that situation. “If it seems like just a small fire, nothing that can’t be easily contained, he’d probably just be annoyed at the inconvenience and walk right out with everyone else.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Then we still have the weekend to come up with plan d.”

“I wasn’t aware we were currently on plan c.”

Tony smiles self-deprecatingly. “Nineteen seventy wasn’t exactly our first stop on the moments in history tour. There was a bit of a disaster in the 21st century, too, but hey, that’s the fun of time travel, right?”

“Well,” Peggy says, “let’s hope it doesn’t come to plan d.”

“Let’s hope,” Tony agrees. 

***

He gets home to Steve later that night and finds him watching Let’s Make a Deal. Steve doesn’t seem to even notice that he’s walked in until he says, “Huh, never knew they aired this in primetime.”

Steve jumps and whips his head around. He goes into instant fight mode, but relaxes when he sees Tony looking at him with a soft smile. His shoulders lose their tension, and he sinks back into the cushions of the couch, head turning back to the television. 

“I’ve never seen it before.”

“How is that possible? It’s still on in our time. Daytime now, but it still looks a lot like this.”

Steve shrugs, “I had a lot to catch up on. Game shows weren’t really included.”

Tony takes off his suit jacket, hanging it over a kitchen chair, and retrieves the orange juice from the fridge. He drinks straight from the carton, and Steve says, “Well, guess I’m done with that now. Aren’t you the one who used to yell at Clint for the exact same thing?”

“It’s empty, anyway,” Tony says, shaking it as proof. He walks over to the closet to put his shoes away and continues, “And Clint did it when it was full and ruined it for everyone. He put his whole mouth around the opening, and I know he grew up in a circus, but there’s really no excuse for that.”

Taking off the starchy white button up, he gets down just to his undershirt and slacks, then joins Steve on the narrow couch. He doesn’t have much choice other than to be so close that he’s almost on top of Steve, but he doesn’t mind the proximity at all. It’s just another painfully domestic thing he’s gotten used to. He knows already that he’s going to miss it when they go back. 

“Any updates?” Steve asks. 

“We have a plan, actually.”

Steve turns to look at him in the flickering blue light. “A real one?”

“Yes, dear, a real one,” Tony grins. “We’re taking them on Friday. I get to light a fire.”

“Okay, I think you might be too excited about the fire, but tell me about the rest.”

Tony gives him the rundown of everything he discussed with Peggy, sparing not even the smallest of details. There aren’t many moving pieces, but it does depend on four people being in the right places at the right time, one of whom having no idea he’s part of a plan at all. Pym himself is the most unpredictable element, but luckily Peggy should have him covered. 

“Peggy says she can distract him to make sure he leaves the lab with everything unlocked. There’s apparently some project they’ve been trying to get him to contribute to for a while now that she can bring up again as the talking point,” Tony explains while a woman dressed like Raggedy Ann attempts to win a kitchen appliance set on the screen. 

“She’ll go in a little after one, I’ll have my alleged lab accident a couple of minutes later, she’ll make sure everyone around her evacuates immediately so he doesn’t have the chance to put the particles in the safe, while I look like I’m trying to get it put out. I’ll get the particles the second they’re gone.”

“And how are you getting out? He’ll notice they’re gone when he gets back.”

“Remember that alley from the first day?”

“Hard not to with how bad it smelled.”

“It’s not far from here, and I still know the way from Lehigh. Think you can be there at one thirty on Friday?”

Steve nods, “Easily.”

“With the evacuation, it shouldn’t be too hard to just slip right out of the crowd and be back in 2023 before he even gets back inside and has the chance to notice. On Monday, it’ll seem like I got fired for causing the accident and some other small incidents, and she can pin the particle theft on me, too, if needed.”

They go back and forth on what ifs for a little while, but there really is no preventing the things that might go wrong. All they can do is hope that everything goes the way it’s supposed to, and they can think on their feet to fix it if it doesn’t.

Steve chews on his lower lip, and his eyes stare unseeingly at the television screen. “Just a few more days, then.”

“A few more days,” Tony agrees. “And we can go back to normal.”

“I didn’t know we had a normal.”

Tony smiles, “No, not really. But maybe we can find one after this. Start fresh.”

“Fresh,” Steve echoes, like the word is a new concept to him and he’s trying it out how it sounds. “I don’t know if I know how to do that.”

Tony raises an eyebrow, “What happened to retirement? Sounded like your plan two days ago.”

“Sure. But what happens after that?”

“Whatever you want, Cap.”

Tony rises from the couch, going towards the kitchen to find something to heat up for them for dinner and leaving Steve to ruminate on that for a while. 

He thinks about it himself while he pulls open the cabinets to evaluate their dwindling options. There isn’t really a normal that he wants to go back to. “Normal” for him is split time between the city and the lakehouse, Morgan for two weeks at a time, then alone for the next two. Happy for only half the time and feeling horribly lost for the rest. 

The alone time is usually spent in the lab, trying fruitlessly to create something that might make the reality of the last five years feel any better. He’s created numerous new versions of the Iron Man suit, always afraid that something worse might be just around the corner. Peter’s suit has gotten upgraded quite a few times, too, even when it seemed hopeless for getting him back. It was a compulsion to keep it going, the words ‘just in case’ on repeat in his head while he added new components to it almost monthly. The kid won’t even recognize it by the time he gets back to Earth.

_ If _ he gets back, Tony’s mind corrects. It’s dangerous to think of anything as guaranteed, and he’s learned that lesson far too many times over the years. 

His mind runs over the topic in circles, and the only conclusion he reaches is that he isn’t sure what he exactly wants, but it’s something else. Something more. He almost had it once, when he and Pepper were at their happiest, not long after they had Morgan. He was close to feeling whole, but even then it felt like something was missing. 

Tony sighs and reaches for two cans of soup, then looks back over at Steve. “Are you sick of tomato soup yet?”

“I was sick of it three days ago,” Steve laughs, and Tony grins at the sound.

“Well then it’s good that this is cream of mushroom.”

Steve grimaces, “I’m definitely taking cooking lessons when we get back no matter what else happens.”

“I can see it now. Captain America retires to become a celebrity chef,” Tony jokes as he reaches for a pot. “I bet there’s a good slogan in there. Still saving people, just from food poisoning.”

Steve gets up from the couch, joining him in the kitchen while Tony shakes out the contents of the cans and adds the water. 

“Maybe that can be the backup plan. You know, just in case the real one goes bad.”

“You have a real one?”

Steve grins as he tosses Tony’s words from earlier right back at him, “Yes, dear, a real one.”

“Care to share?”

Steve rests his forearms on the counter right next to Tony, almost touching, but not quite. He looks Tony in the eye, and there’s something in his that Tony can’t identify. 

“Not yet. Still working on it.”

“Let me know when it’s finished, then?” Tony asks. 

Steve nods, “You’ll know.”


	9. Chapter 9

Thursday night, Peggy has decided, is for celebrating. At least she says it’s a celebration of a job soon to be well done, but it feels an awful lot more like a goodbye. 

They sit together at the kitchen table, a couple of pizzas and a bottle of cheap champagne between them, and talk about anything that isn’t tomorrow. For Steve and Peggy it’s a lot of reminiscing, and it’s funny for Tony to see how different the stories sound coming from them than they did from his father. His father talked about heroics, bravery and character, but Peggy and Steve don’t focus on that at all. They laugh about the things that went wrong, and Steve is never the hero in his own stories. He takes a backseat to the rest of the Commandos and to Peggy herself, giving credit where credit is due. Tony thinks that maybe his first meeting with Steve would have been different if these were versions he heard, instead of his father talking him up like a god. 

For the first time Tony doesn’t feel like an outsider watching them talk, either. Sure, he can’t contribute to the stories they tell about the war, but he doesn’t feel like it’s their moment that he just happens to be witnessing. Maybe it helps to know with absolute certainty where they both stand with each other in terms of moving on. 

“Alright, I think that’s quite enough reminiscing from us,” Peggy says, leaning back in her chair as she drinks from her plastic cup of champagne. The safehouse was lacking in terms of stemware, but not in disposable cups. “I want to hear something from the two of you.”

Steve and Tony exchange a look, and Tony decides on a story rather quickly. “Would you like to hear about the coffee maker incident that took place about ten months after I met Steve?”

Steve groans, “No, don’t tell her that. We agreed to never talk about it again.”

“We agreed to never bring it up in front of Natasha again,” Tony corrects. “We did not agree to never tell the story during time travel incidents. And besides, this is the woman who once saw you trip and fall into a river. It doesn’t get more embarrassing than that.”

“It does, actually,” Peggy interjects. “I’ve seen him do worse.”

Tony laughs, “There you go. This one doesn’t even scratch the surface.”

With that he launches into a story that involves an entire stock of wasted coffee grounds, a fire in the communal kitchen, and a flood that put out the fire while ruining the microwave. That story leads into another, this time embarrassing Tony instead of Steve, then Peggy comments, “It sounds like you have quite the group in the future.”

Tony bites his lip as the smile on Steve’s face dims a bit. Steve nods, but it’s stiff. “We did. Not as much anymore with everything that’s happened.”

“I suppose that the everything that’s happened is in the too much information category.”

He nods again and says, “Probably wouldn’t change much to tell you, but we can’t be sure. There’s a lot there.”

With the jovial mood faded slightly, Tony does what he can to bring it back. “We can probably tell you about the time Steve found out that he’s no longer allergic to shellfish, though.”

Steve sighs wistfully, “That was a good day.”

“Not for my credit card,” Tony jokes, remembering the obscene charge for the amount of sushi and seafood the team ordered for dinner that night. Feeding a super soldier, a god, and Bruce after a Hulk out at the same time could put a dent even in a billionaire’s bank account. He used to complain about it sometimes, light-hearted remarks about footing everyone’s bills, but he can admit now that he misses the simplicity of the way it used to be. He doesn’t know how to feel about the fact that all of the stories he can share tonight are from almost a decade ago. Their last truly good moments without some sort of conflict in between them were so long ago, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like yesterday that it all happened, and even with so much water under the bridge, their interactions now don’t feel affected by it. It’s like his heart has decided that it’s 2013 again and jumped right back into how it used to feel. 

“We never quite got around to testing everything the serum gave you, did we?” Peggy says, interrupting the bittersweet train of thought. 

“Never had the time,” Steve says. “But we did a lot in the future. I’m not allergic to anything anymore, and I haven’t had so much as a cold in years.”

“He doesn’t seem to be immune to biological warfare in all cases, but he’s definitely not dying from a bee sting anytime soon.”

Peggy raises her eyebrows, “Biological warfare?”

“Let’s just say that Steve was a lot of fun under the influence of someone’s attempt at truth serum and leave it at that. Most of what he said shouldn’t be repeated.”

Steve laughs, “You’re making it sound worse than it is. I spent most of it talking to Clint about movies.”

“Yeah, and you have terrible opinions on them. You said that the Star Wars prequels were actually pretty good. That’s more embarrassing than anything else you’ve ever said.”

“What is Star Wars?” Peggy asks, brow knit together in confusion. 

“You’ll know in about seven years,” Tony grins. 

“The same year I should bet on the Yankees?”

“You told her that?” Steve questions, and Tony thinks he’s about to get scolded for sharing that information until he continues, “You could have at least given her something that really went against the odds.”

Tony rolls his eyes, “It was just the first thing that came to mind that wouldn’t throw anything off. If I was trying to make her rich with insider knowledge, sports betting wouldn’t have been the way. You go for stock investments for that.”

“I doubt I would take the advice anyway,” Peggy laughs. “That I know would change things too much, and I would have to guess that the future is rather kind for me as it is, seeing as you’ve both taken such care to avoid altering it.”

“It is,” Steve smiles softly. He looks down into his cup as he says the rest, confessing to the champagne, “It helped me a lot, actually. Knowing that things worked out for you when I woke up in the future.”

Peggy looks like she has a question she wants to ask, and she hesitates for a long moment before finally speaking, “Do I see you again in the future?”

Steve glances over at Tony as if seeking permission to answer it. Tony doesn’t see anything wrong with sharing it, not as long as an exact date isn’t given. She might be more confident in life or death situations before she meets him, knowing that she’ll end up coming out alive, but that’s the only potential problem he can see with it. 

At Tony’s shrug, Steve says, “You will. A long time from now. It’ll be strange for both of us, but it’s probably best if you don’t mention any of this to him. Just - just tell him that it’ll turn out right in the end. He’ll trust it coming from you.”

“Anything else I should tell him?” Peggy asks quietly. “I doubt anything I could say will change whatever it is that’s happened to lead you here, but perhaps if there was something that could give him peace.”

Steve shakes his head, “No, there’s nothing else. Just that he’ll be okay.” Steve pauses, looks over at Tony again, then says, “Maybe tell him that he’ll find his reason. He’ll know what it means.” 

Peggy nods, “I’ll be sure to pass it along.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course.”

“Well, this cycled right back to depressing, didn’t it,” Tony says. “Are the two of you unfamiliar with what a celebration looks like?”

Steve laughs, while Peggy smiles and says, “No, perhaps you’ll need to inform us.”

“We’ve got the alcohol at least, so step one is covered,” Tony says, holding his glass up for emphasis as he stands from his chair. He walks over to the living area, where a small radio is sitting next to the television on the stand. They haven’t used it much, but it’s about to come in handy. “From experience, music is usually involved. Any idea what radio station doesn’t completely suck?”

Peggy gets up and joins him by the radio, turning it on and rotating the dial for him. It starts on an Elvis song that he hasn’t heard since he was a kid, and he holds out his hand to Peggy. “And not to touch on a potentially sore subject, but dancing is generally a requirement.”

He looks over at Steve, and the sadness he was expecting isn’t there at all. Instead, he looks amused as he stands from the table, tucking his chair back in behind himself as he comes over to join them. He half-sits on the arm of the couch, hands in his pockets, and says, “Well, you are the expert here.”

Peggy takes his hand at that, and Tony gives it the best he’s got in the small space they have available. He almost trips on the coffee table, and Steve pushes it against the wall as he laughs at him. 

“I thought you were supposed to be a better dancer than that,” he teases. 

“I guess I’m a little out of practice. Haven’t had a reason for it in more than five years,” Tony replies as the song comes to an end. Another moderately paced song comes on, and Tony steps back and gestures for Steve come forward. “Suppose you’ll just have to show her how it’s done then.”

Peggy laughs and pulls on Steve’s hand while his face turns red. “Not quite that dance we had in mind, is it?”

Steve smiles, stepping closer and putting a hand on her waist, “No, it’s not, but I wouldn’t change a thing. Would you?”

She shakes her head, hand on his shoulder, “Not one.”

The dance they do is slower than the tempo of the song, but they joke and laugh during it, with Tony joining in where he can. Steve spins her around in a circle, her dress billowing out around her, and he grins when his eyes meet Tony’s. He mouths the words, “Thank you.”

Tony shrugs, giving him a smile, and they spend the rest of the night exactly like that, with dancing and laughter filling the room with a sense of happiness that feels like the perfect end for this part of their journey. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more, then the epilogue :)


	10. Chapter 10

After Peggy leaves, Steve and Tony sit on the living room floor, leaning with their backs against the couch and the last of the champagne split between their plastic cups. Tony swirls his around, watching the bubbles rise from it. The alcohol has him feeling pleasantly warm, but not at all inebriated. He thinks it’s a placebo effect that he’s feeling a little emboldened at the moment, enough that he is willing to put aside his own fears to address the subject he can’t ignore any longer. 

“So,” he starts, head lolling to the side to look over at Steve, “that plan of yours. The one for after we undo the end of the world. I think I want to hear it.”

Steve turns, and the golden glow from the single lamp light behind him looks a bit like a halo. The shadows fall on his face, blue eyes appearing navy in the darkness. He doesn’t look that much older than when they first met. A few lines on his face here and there, but nothing to speak for all that he’s been through, all that he’s seen. Tony has enough scars for both of them, though, telling the stories of the last few years on his skin. Every mistake is laid out for him in pale silvery white, and he wonders if it would be a blessing or a curse to have them all washed away like Steve’s. If forgetting the past really does just lead to repeating history. 

“I’m not sure it’s done yet,” Steve says, voice hushed. The radio is still on, playing some love song as a hum in the background.

“Why not? What’s left?”

Steve bites his lip, eyes darting down and back up again, like he wants to look away but thinks better of it. “It involves someone else, and I don’t know yet if they want that.”

“You could just ask,” Tony suggests, and his heart is in his throat now. He doesn’t think he’s been misreading any of this, thinks the signs were pretty clear, and it’s not like it’s the first time they’ve talked about it. Steve wanted him once, long ago, and if the lingering looks and honest conversation from the last two weeks are anything to go by, he still does. 

Neither of them are any good at laying it all out on the line, not with things like this. But Tony doesn’t know what will happen when they go back to their world tomorrow, so he can be the one to make the final push if he needs to be, because he can’t wait another second to know the outcome of this. 

“I could,” Steve says, nodding slowly. “But I don’t know if this is the right time.”

“There’s never a right time, Steve, and if you keep waiting for one, it’ll never happen at all.”

Steve is quiet for a beat, then asks, “If we had been something back then, do you think it would have changed anything?”

Tony wasn’t expecting the question at all, and he stares up at the ceiling while he thinks about it. He reimagines every situation that went wrong between them, from the secrets and lies to the outright betrayals. 

Tony turns back to him and says, “I don’t think so.”

And Steve clearly wasn’t expecting the answer. His eyebrows draw together, a crease forming between them. 

“You disagree.” Not a question, because it’s obvious he does. 

“I’d like to think it could have gone differently, if we’d trusted each other more.”

“That’s a different question, though, isn’t it? Because loving someone doesn’t mean trusting them,” Tony says. “Does it?”

Steve frowns, “No, I guess not.”

“You still wouldn’t have told me about my parents, because you still would have thought you were protecting me, and I still wouldn’t have told you about Ultron before I did it, because I still would have thought it was the right thing to do at the time. We were never going to see eye to eye on the accords, either. If anything, it would have just hurt more in the end.”

“And what about now?”

“What do you mean?”

Steve sets his cup down on the floor next to him, and he angles his body to face Tony directly, one leg bent with his arm resting on his knee. He looks determined now; Tony can see it in his eyes. 

“Do you think it could be better for us now? That it would work out differently than it would have back then?”

Tony smiles, setting his own cup down, “That depends. Got any life altering secrets left?”

“None.”

“Any reasons for me not to trust you? Or any for you not to trust me?”

Steve shakes his head, “I trust you now more than I ever did before. I was hoping you felt the same.”

“I do,” Tony agrees easily, because he knows the Steve sitting in front of him better than he knew the Steve of the past. Understands him in a way that he never did before. 

Tony reaches for Steve’s hand, taking it in his own. He runs his thumb across the knuckles like he’s wanted to do so many times before, and he takes pleasure in the slight hitching of Steve’s breath. “So maybe you should tell me that plan of yours.”

Steve’s lips part, eyes locked on their hands for a long moment, and Tony can’t read all of the emotions that pass through his face. He looks up again and says, “Sam can have the shield if he wants it. I think I’m ready for that part of my life to be over. He’ll be good at it. He already knows how to lead, how to fight, how to make the tough calls. Hell, I think he might know how to do it all better than me.”

“I don’t know about better,” Tony says with a smile, “but he’ll make a fine Captain America, that’s for sure. Do you think he wants it?”

Steve shrugs, “Maybe, maybe not. But either way I’m giving Nat my resignation letter when all this is through.”

“And then what?”

“A quiet life. Someone I love to come home to at the end of the day, or someone coming home to me.”

Tony hums, pulling on Steve’s hand to rest them both in his lap. “Are you accepting applications for that position?”

Steve laughs, “Yeah, sure, but I should probably warn you that I’ve already got someone in mind, and they’re hard to beat.”

“Oh, yeah? What are they like?” Tony asks, playing along. “Gotta size up the competition. You know how it is.” 

Steve pulls his hand back just a little to trace the lines on Tony’s palm with his fingertip, the touch so light that it tickles a bit. He isn’t sure anyone has ever handled him with such care before, like he’s something breakable and delicate. He is, really, but no one else has seemed to realize it before.

“It’s stiff competition,” Steve says. “They’re kind of perfect.”

Tony huffs a laugh, “I doubt that.”

“Not perfect in the traditional sense maybe. No one could be that, and I wouldn’t want them to be, anyway. But I mean that they don’t let anything hold them back, not their flaws or their weaknesses. They see flaws as opportunities to do better, and they make me want to be better, too.

“They’re forgiving and generous and kind, and I hate that it took me so long to see all of that. I hate that I used to mistake their confidence for arrogance, and that I didn’t know how to look past that to see that sometimes it was just an act. Because sometimes it seemed like they never needed anyone, and I think I let that stop me from trying to be someone for them when I shouldn’t have.

“They’re one of the best people I’ve ever met, and I’m not really sure that they know that or if they’d even believe me if I told them, but I hope that they would. I don’t know if I can see a future without them in it anymore, because I already know what that life looks like, and I don’t want to do it again.” 

Steve pauses and takes a breath, and Tony isn’t sure he knows how to do that for himself anymore. He stopped breathing awhile ago, right around that first sentence. 

Steve looks up at him with overwhelming amounts of emotion in his eyes and says, “If you don’t want the same future that I see, I can be okay with that. Your life is different now, and if I don’t fit into it anymore, I understand. But at the very least I’m hoping we can at least be friends again. That I can keep you in my life in some way.”

Tony nods slowly, “I didn’t really like life without you in it, either, you know. I almost called so many times, but I never knew what to say.”

“I would have called first if I thought you wanted to hear from me.”

“I would have answered if you had,” Tony admits. “I always had it with me.”

Steve slides forward across the carpet, his knee bumping into Tony’s thigh. He lifts his hand to Tony’s cheek, and Tony sighs as he leans into the touch. 

Brushing a thumb across Tony’s cheekbone, Steve whispers, “I’ve wanted you for… I don’t even know how long.”

“When was the first time you realized it?” Tony asks, because Steve already knows his. “Was there a moment?”

Steve shakes his head, “I think it’s always been there in some way. There was never - there wasn’t one moment, but maybe a hundred small ones.”

Tony rests his hand over top of Steve’s, and he decides that they’ve done enough talking for tonight. He rises to his knees and leans in close, giving Steve plenty of time to change his mind or pull away. But he doesn’t, and Tony lets his eyes fall shut at the first brush of Steve’s lips against his own. 

Steve kisses him softly, with palpable affection in his gentle touch. Tony kisses back with just as much care, until he can’t take it anymore. Ten years is too long to wait, and his patience has run so very thin. 

Maybe Steve senses his need in his kiss, or maybe he feels the same, but either way the softness is replaced with a degree of urgency. Steve’s hand falls from his cheek to grip his hips and draw him in even closer, and Tony finds himself straddling Steve’s thighs without a conscious thought of putting himself there. He pulls back for just a moment to catch his breath, and in the meantime Steve’s lips move to his neck. 

Tony never let himself give much thought to how it would feel to kiss Steve, how his hands would feel against his skin or his mouth against his throat. The fantasy was tempting, of course, but he never let himself think too much about the things he never hoped to have. But if he had thought about it, he wouldn’t have imagined the way Steve traces the planes and ridges of his abdomen with steady and sure hands, or the way his mouth finds that strangely sensitive spot below his jaw with ease. He couldn’t have possibly fathomed how it would feel to be held by him, try as he might, because he’s never felt safety like this before. 

He twines his hands in Steve’s hair, grounding himself there. Steve finds his way back up to his lips to kiss him again, and when he groans at the slight pull on his hair, Tony files that information away for later. 

“Tony,” Steve whispers, breathing heavily. “Tell me you want what I want. Tell me you want this.”

Tony nods, taking Steve’s face between his hands. “I want it. I want you, and this, and us.”

He wants a life with Steve, whatever that might entail. Learning how to cook together and burning everything they touch at first. Dinner with their friends and family at the lakehouse, all of them happy and alive and whole again. Introducing him to Morgan, and Peter, too. Fighting sometimes, because they’re still them and they’re stubborn and headstrong. But this time it will end with them coming back to each other, with murmured apologies and reaffirming make up sex.

There’s more to discuss, he knows, but all the finer details can be worked out later. For now he kisses Steve a little harder, lets his hands explore Steve’s body like he’s wanted to for years, and revels in the fact that they’re finally here. 


	11. Epilogue

“Sweetheart, have you seen Morgan’s cleats?” Tony calls out as he double checks the mudroom again for them. Her soccer game starts in thirty minutes, so of course they’re just getting the equipment together now. Under his breath, he mutters, “Do not strangle your child. She gets this from you. It’s your own fault. Pepper says it, so it must be true.”

“Did you check her backpack?” Steve asks, coming to stand in the doorway. 

“Why would they be in her backpack?”

“Because she took it with her this weekend when we went to the Compound.”

Tony frowns, trying to remember how the Compound has anything to do with soccer cleats. He snaps his fingers when he gets it, “Soccer with the other kids. They’re in the backpack.”

He kisses Steve’s cheek on the way out of the room and says, “God, I don’t know how I functioned before you.”

“Did you function before me?” Steve teases, following Tony back to the living room where he’s pretty sure he last saw the backpack. He finds it long before Tony would have, tucked beneath one of the hundred throw blankets they’ve collected in the last three years by accident. 

“Sort of,” Tony says while Steve unzips the backpack and pulls out the shoes. “I mean, I never went to bed before two in the morning, drank coffee for most of my meals, and was generally a mess, but I technically survived.”

“You still drink coffee for most of your meals.”

“Yeah, but you make me eat vegetables now, too. It balances out.”

Steve gives him a doubtful look. “Does it?”

“Hopefully,” Tony shrugs, taking the shoes from Steve’s hand to deliver them to Morgan, who should be in the middle of searching her bedroom again for them. He leans in before he goes, kissing Steve quickly. “Thank you for finding them.”

“Any time,” Steve smiles. 

“I’m going to go retrieve the child before we’re late,” Tony says, walking down the hallway of the lakehouse to her bedroom. 

He finds her amongst the contents of half her closet that are strewn about the floor and knocks on the doorframe once to get her attention. She looks up at him, spotting the shoes and jumping up. 

“Forgot to check the backpack,” he says, handing them off to her to complete the rest of her uniform. “Make sure to thank Papa for that one.”

Her eyebrows knit together as she goes through the same process that he did to remember why they would have been in the backpack, and he realizes again that Pepper was completely right about her getting this trait from him. Can’t remember where she put the shoes she needs multiple times a week, but she can definitely recite the first few rows of the periodic table from memory with ease. 

“Oh,” she says suddenly while she ties the laces on the left one, “I played soccer with Lila and Cassie. They taught me how to use my head.”

“They what?”

Morgan nods enthusiastically, “I can score goals with my head now.”

“That’s great,” Tony says, trying to tamp down on the panic that the idea of his seven year old running head first into flying soccer balls gives him. “But maybe for now we should stick to scoring them with our feet. You know, make sure we get really good at that first.”

Morgan nods again, tongue poking out between her lips and eyes narrowing as she focuses on tying the other shoe now. When she’s finished, she pops back up, grabs the bag with the rest of her equipment, and bolts out of the room. He can hear her loud voice as she thanks Steve for finding them for her, followed by her laugh as Steve presumably hoists her into the air and tosses her over his shoulder like she loves so much.

Tony sighs as he looks at the mess left behind on the floor that’ll have to be dealt with later when they aren’t running late, but at least he knows that she won’t put up any argument about cleaning it up herself. 

He goes back to the living room and finds Steve and Morgan exactly as he thought he would, with Morgan still giggling and the bag of equipment temporarily abandoned at Steve’s feet. 

“Okay kid, let’s get in the car before we lose something else,” Tony says. 

At his address to just her, Morgan goes wide-eyed and looks at Steve. “You’re coming, too, right?”

“Of course, Morg,” Steve grins. “Who else is going to peel your oranges for you after the game?”

“Daddy’s really bad at it,” Morgan whispers conspiratorially, except she never quite got the hang of how whispering works. She just lowers the tone of her voice while speaking at the same volume as before. 

“I heard that,” Tony says, but he can’t find it in himself to actually be offended by it. Not when every interaction between her and Steve still has the power to make him melt. He loves the relationship they have, remembers the way the initial worry he had before he introduced him to her as his boyfriend for the first time faded away quickly after the first night. Steve drew her a picture of a turtle, which was her favorite animal for that month, and that was all it took. It’s taped to her bedroom wall still, and Tony smiles every time he sees it. 

Steve stage whispers back to her as if Tony didn’t say a thing, “He’s truly terrible.” 

Tony rolls his eyes while Steve sets her back down. She almost forgets the equipment bag before Steve reminds her about it, and she says another thank you before going to the door. 

They make it to the game just barely on time, and they end up in a spot in the back of the bleachers to watch the match. Tony shivers at the first gust of cold autumn air, and Steve wraps an arm around his shoulders. Lips brush against his temple as he sinks deeper into the embrace. 

“Does it make me a terrible parent if I say that these games are boring?” Tony asks after the tenth time in a minute one of the kids loses the ball the second they get it. 

Steve laughs, “No, but it might make you one if you stopped coming because they were boring.”

“Of course I wouldn’t do that. Although, I’m pretty sure the only one she cares about being here is you,” Tony jokes. “Did you see her face when she thought you weren’t coming? It was tragic.”

“It’s all about the oranges, babe. She knows her priorities.”

_ Three Years Later _

Tony smiles, though they both know it’s not at all about the oranges. Steve just doesn’t want to feel like he’s stepping on anyone’s toes by having her love, too, but Tony and Pepper have had a hundred conversations about it in the last three years only to continually reach the agreement that it doesn’t feel that way at all to them. Morgan is surrounded by love from all three of them, and that’s all they really care about. 

Steve pulls his phone from his pocket and says, “We should send Pepper a video. I know she hates when she has to miss these.”

“Good plan.”

The video ends up in their group chat, giving Tony the chance to see the message Steve sends with it, gushing with pride over the minute long clip of Morgan running around on the field. It makes Tony all the more sure when he casually says, “So I thought about it.”

“Thought about what?” Steve asks, frowning in confusion. 

“What we talked about last week.” 

It takes a few seconds for it to click, but when it does, Steve’s look is cautiously optimistic as he asks, “And?”

“We should do it.”

“Really?”

Tony nods, tracing his finger over the ring on Steve’s left hand. “Morgan would make a really good big sister, and you’re already an amazing dad for her.” Pausing, he tries not to let the emotions overwhelm him as he continues, “I thought about it a lot, and I want a baby with you.”

Steve kisses him hard, and when he pulls back he’s grinning, “You’re sure? Really sure?”

“Really, really sure,” Tony smiles.

More sure than he’s ever been about anything, actually. There’s some fear, too, and worry over the laundry list of things that could go wrong with having another kid, but he also knows he has the best possible person to do it with. They’ll make it through all the bumps and bruises, because they’ve survived worse before and made it out the other side every time. Whatever happens next, they’ll be just fine - together. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr [@ifmywishescametrue](https://ifmywishescametrue.tumblr.com) :)


End file.
